Will Portman explains dad’s delay

Sen. Rob Portman’s gay son Will on Monday defended his father’s delay in supporting same-sex marriage, saying that the timing was partly due to his own “reluctance” to come out.

“Some people have criticized my dad for waiting for two years after I came out to him before he endorsed marriage for gay couples. Part of the reason for that is that it took time for him to think through the issue more deeply after the impetus of my coming out. But another factor was my reluctance to make my personal life public,” Will Portman wrote in an op-ed published Monday in his college newspaper, the Yale Daily News.

Text Size

-

+

reset

Rob Portman announces support for gay marriage

Sen. Portman (R-Ohio), once a staunch opponent of gay marriage, announced earlier this month that he was endorsing gay marriage because his son had come out to him two years earlier during his freshman year at Yale.

Sen. Portman also said that while he was vetted to potentially be 2012 GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney’s running mate, he told Romney about Will’s sexual orientation — and that the campaign told him it wasn’t the reason he ultimately was passed over for Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.).

Portman’s son wrote that he was “relieved” his father wasn’t tapped to run. “When he ultimately wasn’t chosen for the ticket, I was pretty relieved to have avoided the spotlight of a presidential campaign,” he wrote.

“We had decided that my dad would talk about having a gay son if he were to change his position on marriage equality. It would be the only honest way to explain his change of heart. Besides, the fact that I was gay would probably become public anyway,” he wrote.

He continued: “I had encouraged my dad all along to change his position, but it gave me pause to think that the one thing that nobody had known about me for so many years would suddenly become the one thing that everybody knew about me.”

Will Portman also revealed how he came out to his parents, saying that he had intended to do it in person during a winter break but instead did so in a written letter.

“They called as soon as they got the letter,” Will wrote. “They were surprised to learn I was gay, and full of questions, but absolutely rock-solid supportive. That was the beginning of the end of feeling ashamed about who I was.”